


There's always room at the (airport Holiday) Inn

by SapphicScholar



Series: Director Sanvers Winter Warmers Fics [1]
Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Crack, Director Sanvers Warmth, F/F, Fluff, Pre-Relationship, travel trouble
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2020-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:13:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28220712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SapphicScholar/pseuds/SapphicScholar
Summary: With all the flights out of National City cancelled after Livewire's latest attack, Maggie finds herself with a voucher for two free nights at the airport hotel. What's setting up to be yet another disappointing Christmas gets turned around when Alex and Lucy find her and offer to help her make the most of it. After all, everyone needs a little help navigating the real landmine that is a mediocre continental breakfast.
Relationships: Alex Danvers/Lucy Lane/Maggie Sawyer
Series: Director Sanvers Winter Warmers Fics [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2067333
Comments: 29
Kudos: 132





	There's always room at the (airport Holiday) Inn

**Author's Note:**

> Big round of applause to everyone who helped to pull together a fun set of prompts for this Director Sanvers winter event! It's been too long since I've written for this fandom, and I had a blast. I'll see you back here a few more times over the next week or so!

Alex groans as yet another flight out of National City is announced as cancelled. Of course Livewire couldn’t have chosen a better weekend to attack the entire city’s power grids.

“What do you think the odds are that our flight makes it?” Lucy asks, dropping her head to Alex’s shoulder.

“Considering we’re already at a 7-hour delay, I’d give us a…1 in 200 shot of making it off the ground.”

Lucy looks delighted. “Well, at least I can tell my dad I tried to make it home for Christmas.”

“You know this is just gonna end up as more fodder in his anti-alien rant, right?”

“Ah, but Livewire is human. And a human he already couldn’t stand.” Lucy lowers her voice to an attempt at a gruff baritone. “So crass. There is no reason for a young lady to speak like that. You’d know better than that, wouldn’t you, Lucy?” She shakes her head. “Probably thinks she did it to derail Christmas for all the proper young ladies in the city.”

“You think we count?” Alex asks, wiggling her eyebrows.

“Not one little bit.”

Still, they stick around taking inane Buzzfeed quizzes on Lucy’s phone until they hear the formal announcement: “Flight 217 to Metropolis has been cancelled.” It’s followed by cancellation announcements for three more flights, and they watch as the last stragglers still waiting and hoping in the airport begin to disperse.

“Head back to my place? We can order in from Mr. Chen’s and watch _Die Hard_ for a true Danvers sisters Christmas experience. Minus Kara, which is weird. When did she get mature enough to go and do a whole meet the partner’s family thing for the holidays anyway?”

“James’ mom makes really amazing mashed potatoes. You should be jealous.”

“Sorry. Is it weird to talk about them?”

Lucy shrugs. “Not really. It’s been months, and honestly, it was a long time coming even before that.” A smirk pulls up the corner of her mouth. “I bet we could make it weird by telling them about the time we got drunk and made out after game night and—” The rest of the sentence is muffled by Alex’s hand as she presses it against Lucy’s mouth, only to tug it back with a grimace when Lucy nips at her palm.

“Do you want Mr. Chen’s, or do you want me to leave you in the airport all night?”

With a loud huff, Lucy loops her arm in Alex’s and drags her toward the exit. “You drive a hard bargain.”

On the walk they wander past the customer service desk, its line stretching all the way around the corner. “God, I’d hate to be them right now,” Lucy says with a shudder, eying the crowds of people whose moods seem to range from irritated to furious. Half of them are hissing angrily into their phones, presumably yelling at hapless customer service representatives who are just as they are by the confused by the freak attack that had left the airlines out of communication with National City for nearly a full day. “Hey, wait, don’t you know her?” Lucy pivots Alex around and gestures with her head toward one of the women talking to an older man working at the desk. “It looks like—”

“Maggie,” Alex says in unison with Lucy.

“Oh, how fun! We can compare notes about your kissing technique. You’d had a few drinks both times, right? So we can call it an even playing field?”

“Don’t you dare,” Alex whispers in Lucy’s ear, pinching the skin of her wrist as Lucy calls out Maggie’s name and waves to her.

A few minutes later, Maggie walks over to them, trailing a carry-on-sized suitcase behind her and looking utterly miserable. “Danvers, I didn’t know you had travel plans.”

Alex shrugs, trying for nonchalant. “Lucy didn’t want to get stuck alone with her dad for Christmas dinner after her sister backed out last minute.”

“And I’m guessing the choice of a Christmas Eve redeye flight means you wanted as little time with him as possible already?” Maggie asks, reaching out a hand to Lucy. “Maggie Sawyer, by the way. I assume you’re the Lucy Lane I’ve heard all about?”

Glancing over at Alex, an unasked question on her lips, Lucy shakes Maggie’s hand. “You’d be correct, though I didn’t know my reputation had spread quite so far.”

“I forgot to warn you to ignore everything that comes out of her mouth,” Alex grumbles. “But where were you off to?”

“I was supposed to be visiting an old friend in Gotham, but all the later flights are all booked up.”

“Already?”

“Yeah, I was working right up until I had to leave, and by the time I got here, my flight had already been cancelled.” She lets out a sigh. “Guess the people who were here early managed to snag all the empty seats on later ones.”

“Ah shit, I’m sorry,” Alex says, reaching out and squeezing Maggie’s upper arm.

“It’s fine.” She rolls her eyes. “They gave me a voucher for two nights at the airport Holiday Inn for my trouble.”

Alex’s brow furrows. “Can you transfer them to another Holiday Inn where you might actually want to stay?”

“Nope.” She pops the “p,” and gives a rueful little laugh. “I have to use them for tonight and tomorrow, too, and then they can get me into a center seat in economy class for a flight with two layovers. But, you know, they upgraded me to give me access to the hotel’s continental breakfast, so that was a big win.”

“Who can resist some old fruit salad and California’s sad attempt at a bagel?” Lucy teases.

Maggie grins. “Alex said you were fun, but she never mentioned that you had excellent taste in breakfast food.”

“I’m quite the connoisseur of everything bagels, I’ll have you know.”

“A woman after my own heart.”

Alex rolls her eyes at the two of them. “As fun as this is, I kind of want to get out of here before the angry crowds descend on the taxi line. You wanna share a cab back to the city?”

Maggie glances over at the long customer service line, then back to Alex and Lucy. “Honestly? I know this is gonna sound really sad, but I think I might go stay at the Holiday Inn.” She scuffs her shoes along the tiled floor. “I haven’t taken a Christmas vacation in years, and it’s the only compensation I’m getting for all the flight nonsense.”

“Not sad at all. You’ve got some everything bagels to review and report back to me about.”

Alex pulls her backpack higher up onto her shoulders. “We can join you for the shuttle ride if you want? Might be easier—and cheaper—to get a cab from the hotel anyway.”

“Oh, uh, yeah, sure. If you don’t mind the extra time, company might be nice.”

Which is how they find themselves sitting in the back row of a mostly empty shuttle bus, poring over the brochure Maggie’s been given about the hotel.

“Wow, did you know that this hotel is a short shuttle bus ride away from the airport? And it’s complimentary!”

Maggie and Alex roll their eyes, trying to snatch the brochure back from Lucy, only to have her slide away.

“I feel like the rowdy popular kids on the bus,” Maggie laughs, noticing the handful of dirty looks they’re getting from the other exhausted, angry travelers.

Lucy surveys their seats. “Not all it’s cracked up to be.”

“You weren’t one of them?” Alex asks, eyebrows raised.

“Nah, I had friends, but I wasn’t one of the girls who could throw big parties on weekends. Or even attend most of them. You?” Lucy asks, turning to Maggie, then Alex.

Maggie just laughs and shakes her head. “Not even close.”

Alex shrugs. “For a little bit. Then I got a surprise new sister and, after a year of being a total dick to her, decided she was more important than getting invited places.” With a grin, she adds, “That’s when I got really good at punching people.”

“So at least you found a new hobby to make up for it.”

Lucy cackles at Maggie’s joke, then turns back to the brochure. “Oh, dude. Wait. You have a pool!”

“I know National City doesn’t exactly get cold-cold, but I’m not freezing my ass off for a complimentary pool.”

“Please,” Lucy huffs, “you think an airport hotel has the budget or views for an outdoor pool? No, it’s one of those indoor pools that are always on some random floor that you figure out by listening on the elevator until you hear children screaming and pool noodles slapping the water in the distance.”

“You sound like quite the expert. I’ll probably just content myself with shitty room service and whatever basic cable the TV has.”

“No!” Lucy gasps. “Alex, tell her she needs to use the pool.”

“Don’t get me wrong, whatever procedural marathon TNT will have running is gonna be great, but you should at least try to go swimming. If you wait until it’s late enough, the kids have all gotten dragged back downstairs by their parents, and it’s much more enjoyable.”

“Two experts.” Maggie lets out a low whistle. “You guys angling for an invitation?”

Lucy and Alex exchange a conversation made up entirely of eyebrow movements before turning back to Maggie. “If you’re offering…”

(A brief pause, as it is important to note that Alex believes herself to have agreed to a midnight swim and maybe a bottle of wine split between friends that she is, perhaps, more attracted to than she cares to admit. She imagines she and Lucy will be a great comfort to Maggie, who is no longer getting the Christmas vacation she hoped for, and she figures they can always watch _Die Hard_ another night.

Lucy believes they have agreed to all this, plus quite a bit more—a conversation and evening she assumes the wine will facilitate. After all, Alex gave an eyebrow wiggle in response to Lucy’s wink, and surely everyone knows what that means. Alex, of course, knows none of this yet, though she will find out soon enough. Once more, the wine will be key.)

\---

Within the hour, Alex, Lucy, and Maggie are huddled together, clutching Maggie’s single room key like the holy grail as they wait for the elevator to stop at the conveniently labeled “POOL.” The smell of chlorine hits them about two floors away, and they grin, none of them having been in a real pool in years.

Of course, when they arrive, the sign on the door clearly reads that the pool closes at 9pm, and it’s most certainly closer to 11pm now.

“Okay, well, if your keycard opens it, then we’re in the clear,” Lucy reasons.

Alex nods. “Yeah, they have the ability to regulate that stuff, and if they didn’t want us here, they wouldn’t let us in here after 9.”

Maggie seems less convinced, though she also isn’t about to argue when a night hanging out in a pool might be the only decent part of this whole damn vacation anyway. With a swipe of her card, they all wait with bated breath until the light switches to green and the lock clicks open.

“We’re in,” Alex announces in her best DEO voice, earning one laugh and one eye roll, both deeply affectionate.

It’s not like any of them are particularly prepared for a pool, having packed for the cold winter slush of the Northeast, but they make do in sports bras and underwear, clutching bath towels from the room—they’d drawn straws and Maggie had ended up with the hand towel, but Alex had convinced Lucy to trade with her, since “it’s _her_ hotel room, and I’m clearly too tall for a towel that small.” Even without having had any wine yet, they’re giggling hard by the time they’re stripping off their outer layers and slipping into the pool, all the while glancing toward the door to make sure security isn’t coming to escort them out.

Floating through the water on her back, Lucy blinks up at the dim ceiling lights. “We definitely made the right choice. No offense to _Die Hard_ , Danvers.”

Alex, who’s been diving underwater and scaring the crap out of Maggie by swimming low and grabbing her feet when she’s least expecting it, has to agree. “Here’s to Livewire, I guess.”

“I suppose if I can’t be in Gotham, this is the next best thing.”

“Who’s this friend you were going to see anyway?” Lucy asks, kicking her feet enough to propel her in the direction of the others.

With a snort of laughter, Maggie admits, “An ex-girlfriend. But it was chill, we’d ended things on good terms.”

“Very gay of you,” Lucy teases.

“Yeah, yeah. I might just switch my ticket, try to go visit her in the spring instead. Not really worth the cross-country flights for what’ll end up being just a few days now.”

“The flight’s the best part,” Lucy insists, only to get two very vehement denials in return.

“Absolutely not,” Maggie says.

“Flights are stressful,” Alex adds.

“There’s always a crying baby.”

“Or someone leaning their seat all the way back.”

“Or someone getting sick.”

“Or someone getting drunk and loud.”

“And then there’s the turbulence.”

“Or aliens attack your plane.”

Maggie shoots a confused glance over at Alex. “Um, sure, that too. Point is, buses, trains, cars—all so much better.”

Alex nods sagely. “We should carpool next time.”

“I do love a good road trip,” Lucy says. “I call music control.”

“Do either of you even know how to drive in the snow?” Maggie counters, looking between the two of them.

“Excuse you, I grew up in Metropolis,” Lucy shoots back.

“Yeah, but cities have buses and subways. How much winter driving did you really do?”

“I mean…in theory, I can totally do it.”

“Yeah, no thank you. Not dying in some shitty rental Nissan Sentra with no all-wheel drive that you two picked up thinking it would be fine.”

“Please, we’d take a DEO car. Why pay for a rental?”

“And then leave me to drive 80 percent of the trip? Not a chance,” Maggie snorts.

“We’ll learn.”

“Or,” Alex says, with all the surety of someone making midnight plans that need not ever come to fruition, “we can all take off a few weeks in the summer. No snow. Just glorious sun. And we’ll make sure every hotel we stop at has an outdoor swimming pool.”

“Drive from the Pacific to the Atlantic,” Lucy adds.

Maggie, who’s uncertain about the massiveness of the oceans, insists, “Gotta get far enough North to do the Great Lakes then. Except Erie, that one’s a shithole.”

“Yeah, fuck Erie,” Lucy says, slapping the water to really drive home the point.

Eventually, no amount of summer road trip planning can distract them from how pruney their skin has gotten or how hungry they all are. So they pull themselves out of the pool and pretend not to notice just how thin and see-through some of their sports bras have gotten. Though Alex and Maggie both catch each other gazing appreciatively at Lucy’s ass as she frowns at her hand towel before bending over and working it up each leg one at a time.

By the time they get back to the room, they have a game plan. Alex, whose hair is the shortest and therefore the fastest to dry takes responsibility for running downstairs to the overpriced hotel “grocery store” to buy an overpriced bottle of shitty wine and some cookies. Maggie pulls up a food delivery app and does the calculus of figuring out what’s open and then, within that category, what’s most likely to please all three of them and least likely to give them food poisoning. Lucy, meanwhile, calls dibs on the shower because “chlorine does _not_ agree with my hair.”

Soon enough, they’ve all eaten their fill of mediocre pizza and have cracked open the screw-top bottle of wine.

“Merry Christmas!” Maggie calls in a toast, raising her paper cup high into the air.

“And a happy New Year!” Alex adds.

Lucy, not wanting to be left out, raises her own cup. “Here’s to the Holiday Inn!”

“Eye contact!” Maggie yells as they tap their cups together. “Otherwise you’ll have bad sex.”

“Since I’m single, should I go look in the mirror?” Lucy asks, a laugh in her voice. (In her mind, everything is going exactly according to plan.)

“Pretty sure that’s all three of us, Luce, unless Maggie has something to tell us about this ex-girlfriend.” Lucy gives Alex a proper wink-and-nod, and Alex cocks her head to the side and laughs.

“No, no, still single for the holidays.” She tilts her head to the side consideringly. “If I didn’t work such long hours, I’d want a dog. For a lot of reasons, of course, but then I could smooch their furry head on New Year’s Eve and brag about being with the love of my life on Instagram.”

“Don’t be so morose,” Lucy teases. “You have two pretty ladies you could kiss right here.”

Alex chokes on her wine, and Maggie’s eyebrows shoot up.

“C’mon, we can kiss your cheeks right now, and you can save the photo to post on New Year’s.” Lucy leans in, hovering an inch or two away from Maggie’s cheek. “Only if you want!”

“Uh, sure,” Maggie laughs. “A few people from high school managed to find me on social media. Why not make their heads explode?”

“Oh, good point! I’m totally sharing this to my story when you post it,” Lucy adds. “Alex, get in here. Maggie’s other cheek isn’t gonna kiss itself.”

“If you’re sure,” Alex mumbles. But Maggie nods, so she pushes herself up onto her knees and presses a gentle kiss to Maggie’s skin. It smells like chlorine, but it’s as soft as she remembers, and her eyes are closed when the camera shutter sounds.

“Perfect,” Lucy declares it. “Those popular girls have nothing on me now.”

Maggie snorts and rolls her eyes, and Alex busies herself with fishing out the cookies she’d picked up from downstairs.

As they’re polishing off the last of the bottle of wine—all of them at a comfortable level of slightly tipsy and just overtired enough to have lost any remaining filter—Lucy raises her head from the pillows, peering over at Alex and Maggie, who are currently on round 10 of a thumb war tournament, the rules of which only they know. “Fuck, marry, kill. The three of us.”

“I’m not gonna murder anyone!” Maggie gasps, at the same time as Alex blurts out, “Why do I have to choose what to do with myself?”

Lucy rolls her eyes. “The obvious correct answer is that I’d fuck myself and marry both of you. Then I get a freebie murder in the future.”

Alex narrows her eyes. “That’s definitely not how this game works.”

“No, it totally is. You just have to know how to game the system. Duh.”

“Aww,” Maggie coos, Lucy’s words finally registering. “You’d marry us?”

Lucy gives an enthusiastic nod and ticks off the points in their favor on her fingers. “Both hot, check. Both gay, check. Could fit into both of your clothes, check. Can plan a bombass road trip, check.” She shrugs her shoulders. “What else is there?”

“Maggie can cook and knows how not to kill plants,” Alex adds.

“And Alex actually knows how to play pool. Also sew people up. I mean stitches. Those things.” She lets out a snort of laughter. “She looks very cute when she’s patching you up.”

“Hey,” Lucy whines. “You’ve never played doctor with me, and you’ve known me way longer.”

“Like…9 months longer, dude.”

“We could have had a whole baby in that time.”

Alex rolls her eyes. “You spent at least part of that time hating me and my sister.”

“Does she know about Kara?” Maggie whispers, slightly too loud for it to be subtle.

“Yes, I know about Kara,” Lucy stage-whispers back.

“Well there’s something else in Alex’s pro column. And I dated Batwoman, so I bring a superhero to the table, too.” She ignores their gasps of surprise. “Who’ve you got, Lucy?”

With a wrinkle of her nose, Lucy sighs. “I suppose I can always call in Superman if need be.”

“Oh yeah, James is your ex, I forgot.”

Alex snorts at _that_ being the most obvious point of connection to the Lane family, earning a swat to the arm.

“ _Anyway_ ,” Lucy drawls out. “Rewinding, I never hated you Danvers. You were just annoying. Like…a very attractive pain in my ass. Who was maybe committing treason. But you were still a very kissable criminal.” She shrugs. “We got through that little bump in our relationship, though.”

“So how’d you go from putting Alex in the fuck column to putting her in the marry column?” Maggie asks.

“Oh.” Lucy pauses to consider it, shifting to hang one of her feet over the edge of the bed as she thinks. “I don’t know.” She props her head back up to look at Alex. “She’s very dateable. I was pretty shocked you didn’t snatch her up after you got dumped.”

“Lucy,” Alex hisses, pushing her hard enough that she rolls off the bed and hits the ground with a muffled _thump_.

Maggie just laughs, though. “C’mon, right after a breakup everyone ends up in the fuck column. And like you said, she’s too datable to belong there.”

Alex’s whole expression softens as she looks up at Maggie. “Really?”

“C’mon, you’re a total catch.”

Grumbling from the floor, Lucy pulls herself up. “A bit boorish, but I suppose you’ll do for our future marriage. And she’s a pretty good kisser, right?”

Maggie glances between the two of them. “You guys kissed?” She shakes her head. “Nevermind, I probably could’ve guessed that.”

“Alex, which one of us is the better kisser?”

“What? I don’t know!”

“Ugh, fine,” Lucy groans. “Spoilsport. Okay, Maggie, clearly the only thing to do is to have you kiss me, and then try to imagine if it’s better or worse than kissing yourself.”

“You’re the one that wants to sleep with yourself, not me.”

“Well, I guess I’m just the automatic winner of this competition, then.” She smiles wanly. “We probably could’ve guessed that from the start, though.”

“No lawyer-ing your way into a fake win!”

“Yeah,” Maggie adds, nodding along with Alex. “Maybe I’d decide that Alex is a better kisser than you anyway.”

Alex preens, her cheeks flushing a light shade of pink as she smiles.

“Should’ve known,” Lucy mutters to herself. “So are we kissing, or should I find us something on TV to fall asleep to like the old married throuple we’ve apparently already become?”

“We’re not all gonna fit in this bed,” Alex scoffs.

“Alex,” Lucy sighs. “Cuddling is an integral part of marriage. And we can’t always be in your California King bed.”

“Woah,” Maggie gasps. “You have one of those monstrosities? What do you do on your weekends?”

“I know, it really sounds like she should have plans that are a lot more fun than sister nights and passing out diagonally in the middle of her bed after a rousing evening of pool and Great British Bake Off.”

“Lucy!”

“I bet you two kick in your sleep, don’t you?” Maggie groans.

They both fall silent and refuse to make eye contact.

“What a great vacation.”

“I never said we had to sleep,” Lucy clarifies. “That was my second-choice option.”

“And we can always call a cab and go home,” Alex adds, her voice softer. Lucy helps the case by nodding along with her.

“No! I didn’t say—I don’t want you guys to go.”

“Excellent.” Lucy smiles broadly. “I’ll find us an NCIS marathon.”

After a few minutes, she concedes defeat. “We’ve got CSI, infomercials, Scrubs, or Fresh Prince that might be dubbed in Spanish.” When she turns around to get a verdict, she finds Maggie already snuggling into Alex’s chest.

Catching sight of Lucy’s expression, Alex reaches out an arm. “Get in here. Plenty of space.”

“You would be the middle spoon,” Lucy scoffs, but she happily clambers into the bed and presses her cold toes against Alex’s shins, laughing at the little yelp of surprise it elicits.

After a few minutes of watching in silence, Maggie clears her throat. “Thanks for, you know, actually making this a pretty decent Christmas after all.

Alex pulls Maggie in a little closer and gives her a one-armed hug. “Of course. We weren’t gonna leave you to fend for yourself at the Holiday Inn.”

Lucy nods. “It was clear you needed help navigating the maze to the pool. And tomorrow morning’s continental breakfast will be a real test of our skills as a team.”

Maggie snorts and rolls her eyes. “Still, you didn’t have to.”

“I had fun,” Lucy insists. “Even without the kissing,” she adds with a melodramatic sigh.

“Yeah,” Alex agrees, her voice quiet. “Maybe…maybe we could all do this again? Hang out? Just the three of us?”

Maggie smiles and presses a soft kiss to Alex’s cheek. “Play your cards right, and maybe next time there’ll even be kissing, too.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! I'm on Twitter and Tumblr @sapphicscholar


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